EXCERPT: “The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) released the ‘Reforming the Mortgage Interest Deduction: How Tax Reform Can Help End Homelessness and Housing Poverty’ report . . . calling for Congress and the Trump administration to use mortgage interest deduction (MID) reform to end homelessness and housing poverty in America. The report identifies solutions to the homelessness and affordable housing crisis in America that would incur no additional cost to the federal government, those proposed by the NLIHC-led United for Homes(UFH) campaign. The report and UFH campaign call for modest reforms to the mortgage interest deduction (MID)—a $70 billion tax write-off that primarily benefits higher income households—and for reinvesting the billions in savings in affordable housing for the lowest income families with the greatest needs . . . The report shows that each year the federal government spends almost $200 billion to help Americans buy and rent their homes. Seventy-five percent of these resources goes to subsidize higher income homeowners through the MID and other homeownership tax breaks. In fact, the federal government spends more to help the 7 million households with incomes above $200,000 than to help the 55 million households with incomes below $50,000, even though they are far more likely to struggle to afford a place to live. Many experts from across the ideological spectrum point out that the MID is a poorly targeted and wasteful use of federal resources that encourage households to take on higher levels of debt, fails to promote homeownership, disrupts the housing market by inflating housing costs, and mostly benefits higher income households who do not need federal assistance to live in stable homes. Many economists have called for eliminating the MID altogether.” FULLSTORY: http://bit.ly/2uWRFE1